April 13, 2025 – Hello Curns

Weeknotes #116: quiz, beers and dumplings

Enjoyed sunshine, pub quiz, colleagues’ drinks, and homemade dumplings.

Week commencing Monday, 7 April 2025

This image shows the modern skyline of White City in London. The view captures several contemporary high-rise and mid-rise buildings under a bright blue sky with scattered white clouds. A construction crane is visible on the left side, indicating ongoing development in the area. The skyline features a mix of architectural styles, including a prominent glass skyscraper in the centre, cylindrical structures, and angular office buildings with glass facades. — The modern skyline of White City in London

Quantified Self

This week: Stand 4/7; Exercise 3/7 and Move 3/7. (48%). Morning walks: 0/4 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/5. Total steps: 36,322

Life

When I asked my doctor if I should try to use my private medical, she didn’t hesitate to recommend it. I found out the process, but didn’t jump to use it.
Pub quiz week: Joint 7th sounds poor but is, in fact, excellent—like winning. Our musical round was a let-down, and I missed the obvious Boney M song in the mix.
The Technical Design Authority review meeting missed a crucial piece of data, resulting in many extra meetings and work this week (and probably next).
The weather has been decent this week. On Thursday, we were able to eat lunch while sitting on the balcony, looking at the high-rise buildings being constructed around White City.
Drinks with commercial colleagues at the Exmouth Arms near Euston on Thursday evening. It’s a little hidden away and turned out not to be as rammed as some pubs we had walked past. We secured some seats inside and, later, a booth. A very impressive list of beers is available, so I am not sure why I went for the Madri: I guess it is a known quantity.
On Saturday, we attempted to make Chinese dumplings: it was much harder than it seemed, although the handmade ones were better than those made with a plastic crimping tool.

Media

Friday, I was a bit tired and had an evening to myself. I’ve been rewatching episodes of The Blacklist. I am now at the point, towards the end of series 2, where I stopped watching when it was initially on Sky. All the episodes will be new to me from now on, but I am glad I rewatched them as I’d forgotten the backstory. I thought I’d settle in and watch a couple of episodes before I made dinner. Instead, I binged on eight episodes back-to-back, something I doubt I would ever have been able to do before streaming.

Vacillation’s What We Need

I think too much about some things, especially about useful PDA gadgets which aren’t important.

If you hadn’t worked out that I like my PDA gadgets by now, where have you been? I suggest you take a crash course: Phones & PDAs, Anothe r PDA, Personal Information Management, and Why Do We Love Our Mobile Phones?

So I decided that my Treo 600 was a pain. I mentioned before that it’s OK at many things, but it isn’t great at any of them. As a regular Palm it’s good, but as a phone it’s just OK (by which I mean poor). As a camera it is very poor. So, I started to become obsessed by finding a solution to my problem/desire to get it all in one. Then, because I vacillate so much, I decided that my Treo 600 on Orange is actually pretty good and I want to keep it. A few hours later a whole Nokia fetish kicked in before I decided that, yet again, Treo wins. I don’t like the idea of not having my contact and diary synchronised properly. I thought, for a moment, that WAP could be a solution but it’s not the same. Then I saw the new Palm Tungsten E2 and thought well …

Now, please tell me why I became so engrossed in this subject. Why can’t I, just like a normal person, have a phone that is a phone?

It’s A Takeover

As each day passes I have more and more respect for the talents of Chris Moyles.

As each day goes by, I have a newfound respect for the talents of Chris Moyles on the Radio One breakfast show. I’ve noted before that he’s the first presenter in a long time to get me to switch back to Radio One, but almost every day, I find myself hooked into something about the show in a way I haven’t been hooked on the radio for a long time.

I’ve worked in radio. I understand the ‘magic’ of the medium. I know not to believe everything but sometimes, with Moyles, I wonder. His spontaneity seems so genuine and so well-done it is – almost – believable. I have a new-found respect for his talents as a broadcaster and, as very show passes, I see why he’s where he is.

Last Friday, I was listening as he trailed the Radio One 10-hour Takeover that happened on Monday. I was almost sucked into the belief that, on the spur of the moment, he decided to try the system, but my understanding of the medium made me doubt it was likely. The beauty of the web is that you can now find out how it was planned in advance and read all about the technology behind it. Hopefully, and I say this meaning no disrespect to Matt, not too many people will read it, and the magic will be maintained. In a similar way, I hope not too many read the next part of this post, so the mystery can be maintained.

I have to say that the concept of the 10-hour takeover is nothing new, and, in many places, it’s as well-staged as Moyles pretending to try to break the system without any planning. Most radio stations have some “you say it, we play it” mentality at some point in the day. In fact, my parents received some calls for Beacon By Request years ago when their home phone number was similar to that of Beacon’s Shrewsbury call-in line. Digital station, Core, claims to be driven by listeners’ requests (and will even text you back to say that song is being played).

Depending on the size of the station and the number of listeners at any one time, the whole listener jukebox is, most likely, something of a con. There are so many requests that stations can, pretty much, stick to their playlists while actually playing the requests. They can filter out the material they don’t want. On smaller stations, I imagine they’re making up the requests so, again, it can conform to their playlists (which – like them or not – are a vital part of their identity). So, all in all, I wasn’t excited by the 10-hour takeover whatsoever, but when I read items like this from David at Fuddland (via plasticbag) it strikes me that The Frog Chorus can’t have been anywhere near Radio One’s playlist for many years. So, hats off to Radio One and the technology team behind it.

I wonder what impact – if any – it will have on Radio One’s programmers? From what I have seen, the selections were older hits and often, like The Frog Chorus, a little off the wall. Did the broadcast teams actually select the most ridiculous tracks suggested? And what does this do for Radio One?

Next time, however, let Chris Moyles appear to break it. That would be even better radio.

UPDATE: The full 10-hour takeover playlist is available on the Radio One site.

Google Mail Controversy

According to BBC News, Gmail, the planned free e-mail service from Google, could be facing strong legal opposition in California

I suspect everybody will link to this over the next few days, but it does make me smile. At the beginning of April, Google announced an email service. This morning, BBC News reports that a US Senator is drawing up legislation to stop it on the basis of the reports, which claim it will scan emails to allow targeting text advertising to be placed (similar to the other Google ad products).

I don’t know if it’s the Senator’s actual words or a BBC journalist writing, but the legislation is reported to being put in place because the problem,

“is Google’s plan to make revenue from users agreeing to their incoming e-mail being scanned for targeted advertising”/ source

The keyword for me there is “agreeing”. If you agree to the scanning (which I suspect is being hyped out of all proportion), then why not get the benefits of all the extras Google are offering? There are many other email services on the market, so there is no reason to sign with Google unless you want to.

I am not sure if somebody is just jumping on the bandwagon, but Google’s getting a nice lot of coverage from this offering, and with an IPO looming, it can’t be such a bad thing. I do suspect that over the next few days, you will also see a whole stack of marketing gurus commenting on the effect any controversy is having on the Google brand. You heard it here first!